The Interpretation of Cakes
A book review by Rabbi Jeffrey Cohen
This is a novel where it will pay the reader not to skip the Prologue (to be honest, I often do so).
Here, Tegg sets the scene. The storyteller, having retired, is sitting on the banks roughly where Sydney Harbour meets the Parramatta River. He encounters an elderly, heavy-accented man who introduces him to the very concept of the Interpretation of Cakes and the primary protagonist, Isaak Brodsky, who has been running a cake shop in Budapest during World War I from his father, Yitzhak, who was experiencing depression.
As Tegg describes Australia of his youth and its somewhat predictable (some would say boring) cakes of the 1950s and 60s, there are those of us of a certain age who will resonate with that time. There was the occasional “exotic” or “continental” cake shop, which could be found in Acland Street in Melbourne or perhaps at the Gelato Bar in Bondi or certain coffee shops in Double Bay. Otherwise, it was the predictable Lamington, Crème Buns or Vanilla Slices that were found in cake shops of that era- and to be honest, sometimes that is all I want! As the narrator succinctly notes at the end of the prologue, “The shops in Sydney now sell cakes that mirror my country’s transition from its British past.”
The storyteller is a retired therapist- any reader would assume that if it is not Tegg, he is modelled on Tegg. There is Isaak, his sister Shoshana, his mother Nina and his father Yitzhak, who at the beginning of the story experiences depression and responds to the depression by filling all available space in the Patisserie with cakes almost from floor to ceiling. It is then that Isaak takes over the business.
Other participants are Hershko Kubrinszky, who has become a successful businessman by bullying and abusing others, especially his employees, and Keila Davidovitis who has been widowed for 20 years and looks out over the roof line of Budapest including the Dohany and Kacinsky synagogues. The final player is Aliza Lovy.
The narrator, as he develops the story, makes the reader reflect on whether the sort of cake they enjoy says much psychologically about themselves. It begins with Izaak not wanting to sell Hershko the cake he requests, and Hershko is smashing what is offered rather than accepting Izaak’s suggestion. Later when Keila and Aliza separately enter the overstocked shop, he makes suggestions too.
There is an interlude set in Ukraine when Nina and Yitzhak are courting at the end of the previous century. There is a complex description of the sexual tension between them, and indeed, they leave the small sheitel to be married, which is not consummated for some time out of fear of producing progeny- obviously, it does occur, for they have two children when they live in Budapest.
We are introduced to a range of cakes which were part of the experience of Budapest then, and probably still today. There is the fifteen-layered Russian Honey cake, apple strudel, the Punch cake [which is the one destroyed by Hershko], the Flodni, and even the Chocolate Chestnut Roulade among the myriad of choices.
Hidden within the book is an excellent description of what good psychotherapy can be: “Most psychotherapy patients enter the process expecting the therapist to do what psychotherapist does. They do not understand that they cannot just sit back and let the practitioner guide them down a well-worn path.” That alone makes the book worthwhile. Also, the book is set in 1916, which is still in the infancy stage of the development of psychiatry and psychotherapy.
There is a fascinating aside in the Prologue. “The fifth Congress of the International Psychoanalytic Association was held in 1918 at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.”…..” it’s amazing to think that Isaak Brodsky was offering Cake-analysis around the same time Freud was giving a paper in this building. Imagine Freud buying a cake from Isaak. What would he choose, and what would be Isaak’s interpretation?” I was fascinated and my curiosity was aroused.
Tegg cannot fail to offer psychological insights throughout the book- some might even consider it psychological jargon. I am unsure if it really improves the narrative!
There is a very strange scene where Izaak smears himself with a Kreme (used in one of the cakes) and runs around the shop. My psychological training does not go too deep but I am sure any Freudian reading this would find much to find in interpreting this image.
Izaak’s sister Shoshana is portrayed as “quite the looker”, but it seems that while her friends have success in finding partners, this has alluded to her. Aliza is similar in that her female friends experience what she describes as ‘goosebumps’ in their relationship this alludes to her until Izaak, and yes, in the end, they get married.
I don’t think I can remember a novel that has both a prologue and an epilogue. The latter aims to tell us what happened to the protagonists in the Second World War and the years that followed.
I cannot say that I enjoyed this book. I can say that reading it was not only worthwhile, but it has expanded my thinking, especially as to how cakes can reflect our personality – perhaps next time when I pick up that torte or lamington, I can reflect on what is happening in my life, at that moment. And, of course, the very title is an illusion to Sigmund Freud’s classic The Interpretation of Dreams (published in 1900 in Vienna)- a classic that had shaped the author’s life for 40 professional years.
The Interpretation of Cakes
Allan Tegg
Published by Puncher & Wattman
Rabbi Jeffrey Cohen is associated with Notre Dame Australia’s School of Medicine and St. Vincent’s Private Hospital, Sydney. Previously he was associated with UNSWMedicine; University of Ballarat (now Federation University); and St. Louis University. He served as CEO of the Sydney Jewish Museum for 5 years.
